There is a strong trend in electronic consumer devices to reduce the thickness of every component so that overall dimensions of such devices can be reduced. Substrates for antennas are no exception. However, thinner substrates are incompatible with certain processes and materials. For example, the desire to use thinner substrates is tempered with the difficulty of maintaining or increasing conductivity of antennas prepared on such substrates.
There is also a trend in consumer devices to increase the number of antennas in a device, the number of traces within an antenna, and/or the complexity of antennas. Such desires further complicate the ability to decrease the thickness of antennas.
In addition to decreasing thickness and maintaining or increasing conductivity of antennas, there is also an ongoing desire to make antennas transparent or less noticeable. For example, wearable electronics and devices containing liquid crystal display (LCD) screens, such as, watches, televisions/monitors, cellular telephones, and tablets, can have a bezel area surrounding the LCD screen, allowing for the antenna to be included therein. Such bezel areas are decreasing in size or being eliminated, thereby causing a need for antennas to be smaller and/or transparent.
Increasing transparency is especially difficult because the percent transmission of light is generally inversely proportional to the level of conductivity and the thickness of a material. As such, there is an ongoing desire to produce a material arrangement with conductive traces having high light transmission rate (for example, greater than 80%), with conductive traces having a high level of conductivity (for example, based upon a sheet resistance of less than 0.1 ohms/square), and with devices having a low thickness (for example, less than 300 micrometers).
A known attempt to achieve these desired features is by use of indium tin oxide (ITO). ITO allows higher conductivity, but decreases light transmission rate as thickness is increased to achieve desired levels of conductivity. Maintaining ITO at a lower thickness for desired light transmission, results in too low conductivity.
Electronic articles and processes of producing electronic articles that show one or more improvements in comparison to the prior art would be desirable in the art.